In praise of the iPad: A contrarian view

Filed under: iPod Family, iPhone

If there has been an editorial theme about the iPad over the last few days, it's been this: it disappoints. Pundits and consumers alike have been underwhelmed by the name (I mean, seriously, does anyone in the product naming department use feminine hygiene products? How many of these devices are going to be named "Max"?), by the physical design (Can you say "Un-Ives-like Bezel" three times fast?), by the missing features (no camera, no multitasking, still no Flash), and so forth. And yet, despite these seeming flaws, I'm wildly enthusiastic about the tablet. I think part of that enthusiasm is attributable to the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool netbook user... and we are the actual target audience for the device.

Steve Jobs laid out the raison d'etre for the tablet right at the start of his presentation. Apple was going after the part of the market that wanted light computing: more than a phone could deliver and less involved than a laptop demanded. Ergo, the netbook. The list of things in the middle column of his main slide reflected the exact way that netbook users operate: checking the mail, surfing the web, enjoying some media. That's exactly how my parents use their netbook, how my friends do, how I do. We're coffee-shop, hotel, and passenger-seat netbook users. To that, you can add city commuters and airline passengers among those who have driven the netbook craze.

Netbooks are great. They are small, they are insanely cheap, and they offer just enough functionality to get a few things done without jumping into serious work that would demand a full-sized screen and keyboard. I know approximately three badzillion netbook users, and with very few exceptions, they are all Windows users.

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In praise of the iPad: A contrarian view originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In praise of the iPad: A contrarian view originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPad Displaying Adobe Flash in Apple Publicity Videos? Wait, What?

TiPb assumed, for reasons we’ve written about ad nauseum infinitum, that there was no way Apple’s new iPad would include Adobe’s Flash plugin, yet 9to5mac has been analyzing the publicity videos and claims in them Flash there be:

In Apple’s official video the iPad, they show the New York Times being used. Looks pretty nice right? Well, unless the Times has a special iPad version of the site that converts Flash into jpegs or something, THE IPAD HAS FLASH. Normally, we’d say that Apple simply did the renders in the Mac version of Safari and just CG’ed it into the video. However, you can see the page rendering and being resolution independent as well, so it is likely being done on an iPad.

Of course, during Steve Jobs’ on-stage demo, we saw no sign of Flash, only the now famous/infamous blue lego-brick of plugin fail. And Adobe doesn’t seem to know anything about it, given the little barb the Flash team posted the other day:

It looks like Apple is continuing to impose restrictions on their devices that limit both content publishers and consumers. Unlike many other ebook readers using the ePub file format, consumers will not be able to access ePub content with Apple’s DRM technology on devices made by other manufacturers. And without Flash support, iPad users will not be able to access the full range of web content, including over 70% of games and 75% of video on the web.

We’ll get to that scary ePub news in another post, and schedule our tears right behind those we’re saving for the “iPad/iPhone don’t run ActiveX” charges inevitably to follow, but for right now–

What’s going on here? Internally Apple has Flash running in the lab and it crept into the demo? “One more thing” scheduled for pre-launch hype? Is the NYT doing dynamic for-iPad/iPhone Flash to H.264 or JPG conversion? Did some eager video maker make a colossal mistake? WHAT?!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPad Displaying Adobe Flash in Apple Publicity Videos? Wait, What?

Apple to Developers: Start Developing Your iPad Apps Today… with iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta (Sigh)

Apple has sent a note out to iPhone and iPod touch developers encouraging them to start developing iPad apps today… with the iPhone 3.2 SDK beta (!)

iPhone SDK 3.2 beta is now available to all iPhone Developer Standard and Enterprise Program Members from the iPhone Dev Center.

The iPhone Dev Center also provides additional resources including the iPad Programming Guide, iPad Human Interface Guidelines, Preparing Universal Applications, and sample code.

Log in to the iPhone Dev Center and start developing innovative applications for iPad today.

And yeah, Apple said from the beginning that iPhone 3.2 beta was exclusive to the iPad, but come on Apple, it’s iPhone 3.2, are you going to throw the actual device, the one that hasn’t seen even a hint of an update for months, a little love here?

Or are we going to have to wait for an iPhone 4.0 beta in March?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple to Developers: Start Developing Your iPad Apps Today… with iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta (Sigh)

Jobs to Mossberg: iBooks Same Price as Amazon, iPad 140hrs to Music, Save as iWork Pages as Word Doc

The godfather of tech columnists, Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal, got some face time with Steve Jobs at the iPad launch and Boom Town’s Kara Swisher was there with the shaky cam!

• When asked why people would buy an iPad iBooks book for $14.99 rather than an Amazon Kindle book for $9.99, Jobs said the books would be the same price, and further said publishers withhold books from Amazon because they’re not happy about the price. (Could be referring to Apple’s standard 70/30 split which Amazon just recently announced they’d match in some cases).
• When asked about battery life, Jobs said the iPad’s quoted 10hrs for video/WiFi would actually be a bit longer for iBook reading, and around 140hrs for music playback.
• When asked if 10hrs was enough for iBook reading, Jobs pulled out the “no big deal”, said users would just plug it in, and asked if anyone reads for more than 10hrs anyway.
• When asked if Mossberg could write his iPad review on the iPad, Jobs told him he sure could, in iWork Pages, and export it as a Word Doc if he wanted to. (there’s been talk it can export as PDF for easy sharing as well).

[via Macrumors]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Jobs to Mossberg: iBooks Same Price as Amazon, iPad 140hrs to Music, Save as iWork Pages as Word Doc

Netsize calls out App Store as most successful mobile platform

Filed under: Surveys and Polls, Apple, iPhone, App Store

Netsize unveiled the results of something called the Mobile Trend Survey 2010 at European mobile tech conference M-Days, and they say that 87% of industry professionals surveyed put Apple's App Store front and center when asked about the most successful platform for mobile software. Android came in next at 60% of people expecting it to find success, and then drops off into generic answers and lots of smaller mobile outlets.

What's perhaps most interesting is that while this announcement came out today, the survey was likely done before the official iPad announcement, and since Apple has made it clear that the App Store will play a huge part in the iPad's future as well, that's just more checks in the win column. Apple gets a lot of credit for its quality hardware (and rightly so), but it might actually be the App Store model (for better or worse) that becomes the most significant creation of the past few years.

Netsize calls out App Store as most successful mobile platform originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Netsize calls out App Store as most successful mobile platform originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 06:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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